Atlantic Fleet, was also pleased with the performance of the aircrews. Captain Gordon Rowe, commanding officer of Ranger, did however point out that the Dauntless and Wildcat aircraft employed in the operation were outdated and that the US Navy "...should not ask our pilots to fight in obsolete aircraft when better types are available...". Following the operation the commander of the Southern Attack Group, Commander J. A. Ruddy, was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, while other servicemen taking part in the operation were awarded the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. The British official historian Stephen Roskill judged that the attack was an "outstanding success", especially as it was the first combat mission for sixty percent of the aircrews involved. Historian Robert C. Stern wrote in 2012 that it was difficult to determine how many ships were sunk during Operation Leader as some of the vessels which were run ashore were possibly refloated and repaired. He assessed that five ships, with a total of approximately 19,000 gross register tonnage of carrying capacity: Cap Guir, La Plata, Rabat, Skramstad and Vaagan, were probably destroyed. According to Norwegian sources pre-dating Stern's assessment by decades, two ships, Rabat and Vaagan, were sunk, and three, La Plata, Skramstad and Topeka, were damaged beyond repair. The German naval historian Jürgen Rohwer lists the ships destroyed by aircraft in Operation Leader as La Plata, Rabat, Skramstad, Topeka, and Vaagan. Cap Guir, assessed by Stern as probably destroyed, survived, and was eventually sunk by Soviet torpedo bombers in the Baltic in April 1945. In his 1974 book Deutschlands Handelsschiffe 1939–1945, the German maritime historian gives the same list as Rohwer for German ships destroyed in Operation Leader. Schwadtke states that La Plata and Rabat were the German vessels lost off the Bodø area on 4 October 1943, and lists Cap Guir as sunk in 1945. While German and Norwegian sources mostly give the same number and names of ships destroyed in Operation Leader, English-language authors are more split in their estimates. While writers like British aviation author Christopher Chant, American military historian Eric M. Hammel, American historian James P. Levy, British military historian Chris Mann, and American aviation author Barrett Tillman, list five ships as destroyed, others like American military historians Kermit Bonner and Spencer C. Tucker write that six ships were sunk. Stern has also written that the disruption to the convoys off Norway caused